For today’s coffee review, I review the Funky Chicken from the small town of Floyd, Virginia from the award winning coffee roaster, Red Rooster Coffee.
What is Red Rooster Coffee?
As I am originally from a small town, I support small town coffee shops. But my small town which I grew up in was at the time 10,000-20,000 people. Floyd, Virginia has a population of 425 according to the 2010 census.
Perusing information online, the small town has your local hardware store, a country store, a barbershop and known for its bluegrass music and home to the National Music Festival.
The small town is also known for Red Rooster Coffee, the award winning coffee roaster selected by Forbes Magazine in 2018 as one of the “Top 12 Coffee Roasters in the United States”.
Red Rooster Coffee was founded by husband and wife duo, Haden Polseno-Hensly and Rose McCutchan.
Rose who once lived in NYC, moved back home to start the BlackWater Loft cafe in 2005 (which would later become known as Red Rooster Coffee Roaster and Cafe) with her mother and sister, wanted to increase the quality of their coffee and invested in roasting coffee in-house. With the help of family and friends, Red Rooster Coffee Roaster was born in 2010.
Haden, who received an MFA in creative writing in Alaska, lived in Italy, moved back home to marry his high school sweetheart and learn the coffee business, from roaster, bagger, distributor, salesman and also working hard for the community as President of SustainFloyd (which supports the community’s next generation in order to preserve Floyd County’s existing assets and traditional strengths in agriculture and craftmanship to build a resilient rural local economy), also having a hand in organizing the SplitRail Eco-Fair and the 350.org event.
But one thing I’ve learned that with their passion to the community and also to ecology, it all plays a big part in what makes Red Rooster Coffee special.
For one, within a decade, the company won “America’s Best Espresso” at Coffee Fest NYC in 2016, 1st Place Brewers Cup, TN US Coffee Champ Qualifiers in 2019, 1st Place for “America’s Best Cold Brew” Coffee Fest Baltimore in 2018 and has been a Good Food Awards winner for 2017, 2019, 2020. And also have several dozen coffees placed above 90 on Coffee Review.
And just because they are in a small town full of artisans and craftsman, this company aims high in quality for coffee but also being progressive in the direction of the company.
For one, they are the only coffee company in the country with a licensed onsite daycare facility for staff’s children.
They also source their coffee responsibly using Organic and Fair Trade Coffee for their signature blends and many of their single origins. When not using Organic and Fair Trade Coffee, they use premium quality coffee beans sourced from estates and farms that are known to treat workers equitably and take care of the land.
One of the things that you will notice with Red Rooster Coffee, they commission artists to create artwork for their bags.
In fact, they offer biodegrable coffee bags, not the usual foil bags which companies utilize. They also have their bags hand-printed locally using water-based inks, composting their chaff with local organic farms and minimizing their footprint by recycling and reusing within their facilities.
They also hire locally, providing a living wage and full health care benefits to their employees, contribute to local charities and participate in local fundraisers with an intention of developing into an economic and social anchor in their small rural community.
The company has since grown to employ around 30 employees, roasting some of the best coffee in the world.
Which leads me to today’s review of their coffee, Funky Chicken. Now, eating or drinking something with the word “funky” is something I tend to distance myself away from.
But this is an exception. Knowing Red Rooster Coffee is known for its exceptional coffee, I put my faith that “Funky Chicken” is very much a good thing.
According to RedRooster.coffee about “Funky Chicken”:
When we first began roasting coffee we wanted to create a blend that would appeal to all audiences. With a lot of practice and a little luck, we created a winner. The Funky Chicken is a complex yet unique cup that delivers the bright acidity and caramel sweetness of a medium roast and the smooth chocolatey earthy mouth feel of a dark roast. This blend features three coffees roasted at different profiles to create one of the finest medium to dark roast blends in the area
So, what are the three coffees blended? It’s coffee beans from Nicaragua, Colombia and East Timor. The coffee was grown in Indonesia and Central America and the beans went through a washed-method.
Upon drinking it, the notes were nutty, cocoa and you get a good balance of acidity and caramel sweetness that would come from a medium roast and the cocoa of the dark roast.
The combination of all three is rather complex but pleasant and full of flavor that the finish is a fine balance of sweet/dark and just delicious.
The coffee rated 94 by Coffee Review which said, “ A deep, richly sweet blend, deftly roasted to medium-dark, with cocoa for miles and stone fruit and florals throughout”.
Personally, I felt this was a flavor was impressive and I felt the company has hit a grand slam with the combination of the three coffees roasted from different profiles to create something so unique and tasty.
Red Rooster Coffee‘s “Funky Chicken” is highly recommended
